The head nurse and unit clerk looked at each other and grinned before saying simultaneously, “BECAUSE HE HAD AN ‘ACCIDENT’AND PEED!”
The nursing staff broke up in uncontrollable giggles while I moaned in mental anguish. Explaining to my sister could take all day if they continued to “help” me. I turned to them and said sarcastically, “Thanks, guys!”
“Gina! Gina listen carefully to me. Something happened to me in my laboratory. I got young again. My graduate student Paul called an ambulance. They took me here. I was too small to sleep in a regular bed so they put me in Pediatrics. Is that clear so far?”
Gina nodded and said, “Uh huh.”
She looked like she had understood the first part so I said, “I was too small to wear my underwear. The only thing they had for me to wear that was my size were baby diapers, okay?”
Gina’s brows furrowed dangerously with the beginnings of confusion. I could tell she was starting to lose the thread of conversation. I had to finish quickly before I lost her entirely. I said slowly so she would understand, “So they dressed me in baby diapers. Is that clear?”
“Uh huh,” Gina said.
“Good,” I said, “I’m glad that’s all settled. Let’s go, Gina. I’m tired and I want to go home. Here, let me have that blanket.”
I took the blanket from my sister’s hands and threw it over my bare legs and diaper gratefully. It was bad enough that I should be wheeled through the hospital with a bare chest. Everyone didn’t have to know I was wearing a diaper too! Sometimes my sister’s stupidity proves useful. “The Lord looks after fools, babies and drunks,” my Dad used to say to me after he would catch my sister doing something spectacularly stupid, “I’m sure he keeps an eye on your sister too!”
My nurse handed Gina the plastic bag with my personal belongings and clothes that I had been admitted to the hospital with. Apparently Paul must have brought it with him when he rode in the ambulance with me. The head nurse walked with us as we went to the patient entrance to the hospital. She stood with my nurse and made small talk until Gina brought her truck around. Gina stopped the truck and parked it, getting out of the truck to help me in and buckle my seat belt for me. The head nurse peered in the front of Gina’s truck and said, “You can’t transport him like that! It’s illegal, you’ll get a ticket!”
“I will?”, Gina said in confusion, “Why?”
“There’s a law that says that children under the age of four must sit in auto baby seats when they’re being transported in a passenger vehicle,” the head nurse explained.
“But I’m forty-one years old!”, I interjected.
“The police won’t know that when they stop your sister, Mr. Hawkins. They’ll give her a ticket and let her explain to the judge,” the head nurse said.
“But what am I to do?”, my sister said in distress, “I don’t have a baby seat for my truck! I don’t want to get a ticket!”
“Wait here, Miss Hawkins. The hospital has loaner seats to lend parents that need one in an emergency. We keep them in a closet next to the information desk. I’ll go and get one for you, okay? I’ll just be a minute,” the nurse said handing the plastic bag she was carrying to the nurse standing behind me.
“Okay!”, agreed my sister.